Color-spraying explosion causes major fire at Foxconn factory

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An explosion and fire broke out at a Foxconn factory around 10:20am this morning (around 10pm EST last night) in the northeastern city of Yantai, Shandong Province, China. The exact cause of the explosion is unknown, but it happened in the area of the factory tasked with color spraying devices and has been labeled as an “improper operation of workmanship” incident.

The Yantai factory is huge, Foxconn’s second largest after the Shenzhen plant, and has 80,000 workers on staff. This isn’t a Foxconn location handling Apple devices though, instead it focuses on Sony laptops, PCs, printers, cellphones, LCD TVs, and general PC component production.

We don’t know if anyone was hurt, but a large explosion followed by a fire of this size must have caused some injuries. If any did occur, it will probably speed up Foxconn’s plans to replace workers with robots.

In the first video below you can also hear further explosions happening as more of the equipment inside is damaged. As color paint was involved there’s bound to be a number of aerosols present in and around the location of the fire.

Apparently it took ten fire trucks to bring the flames under control, but that was achieved in around 30 minutes. As it was contained quickly there may not be much structural damage, but an investigation is sure to happen both by Foxconn and the Chinese government. There may also be some delays down the line for certain products such as Sony laptops depending on what devices were actually being color sprayed at the time.